The Dartford Train Station Reunion: Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry in Mick Jagger’s Arms

It was October 1961 at Dartford Station, and Mick Jagger was heading to the London School of Economics with two LPs under his arm—The Best of Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry’s Rockin’ at the Hops. Keith Richards, waiting on the same platform, recognized his old primary-school classmate and noticed the records. That split-second riff on shared taste in American blues and R&B turned a chance encounter into a lifelong partnership.

Keith had been into Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, but Mick’s Muddy Waters album showed he owned something deeper. The conversation—about how they’d each tracked down obscure Chess Records imports, about the slide guitar on “I Just Want to Make Love to You”—was the first time